


year of ...

by meltingheart



Category: SHINee
Genre: :/, A.I. Character, Alternate Universe - Lawyers, Cock Warming, M/M, Mermaids, Non-Human Genitalia, PWP
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-29
Updated: 2019-12-26
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:35:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 8,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21609178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meltingheart/pseuds/meltingheart
Summary: a general collection of everything i wrote in 2019 that i did not finish and have no plans to.
Relationships: Kim Jonghyun/Lee Jinki | Onew, Kim Jonghyun/Lee Taemin
Comments: 6
Kudos: 15





	1. mermaids i

**Author's Note:**

> it's all on the label! i'm going to update this once every few days until the end of the year with works of varying length. for each chapter, i'll name it with the single trope that i think defines it best (usually whatever i refer to it as myself). tags will be added accordingly as i add each chapter, and each beginning note will have the ship and chapter rating. 
> 
> for this chapter: mermaids, jongtae, rated G.

There had always been tales, myths about merfolk who had interacted with the four-limbed folks from above-water. They cast the other folk as a dangerous lot, who gutted merfolk like fish and cast nets thousands of armspans deep into the waters, scooping up prey regardless of whose territory they were taking from. Above-water folk were to be feared, avoided, especially after they took notice of merfolk with their stories and, more importantly, their weapons. With little other options, merfolk swam their ways deeper into the seas, farther away from shorelines where plump fish were fed by river runoff, and towards open water, leaving beautiful coastlines inhabited for millenia behind. 

Jonghyun scoffed over the tales, usually, though his heart soared at the thought of them; to dream to be part of an adventure, to be swept up starry-eyed into a story was only second-nature to him. 

But Jonghyun didn’t think any of the stories that cast above-water folks as evil and terrifying horrors held knowledge about how  _ gorgeous  _ above-water folk truly were. 

He quickly ducked back under the water, careful to stay in the shadows behind the rocks, face so flushed it started heating up the water around it. No merperson he’d ever seen was as beautiful as that, none of them had the softly curving waxing-moon smile or the full cheeks to round out their faces, or soft dark hair swept in the breeze like that. Jonghyun suddenly felt like maybe he understood the tales he’d been warned to heed. If all above-water folk were that handsome, it was no wonder why their populations were halved by above-water poachers and suitors. 

Jonghyun bit his lip. Should he peek again? Was it safe? He was already putting himself in a lot of danger - his pod lived so much farther out, and he had been here alone for most of the week. Not even Kibum knew where he was this time, having abandoned keeping up with the progress of Jonghyun’s expeditions. There had been a time when the two had obsessively journeyed around the more navigable part of their territory, but it had long passed as the other grew out of it and obsessed himself with pod politics. He was pretty sure Kibum didn’t even have any idea he’d found this island outcrop yet. 

Curiosity got the better of him, as it often did, and Jonghyun found himself bobbing just high enough above the water for his vision to be clear, floating with the waves so his tail wouldn’t accidentally slap against the surface. 

The above-water folk was still there, idly kicking a limb into the water, frowning. Jonghyun found himself frowning too - they had been so much prettier with a smile. He wondered what they were even doing here, and how they even got here. He’d been coming to this outcrop for a few seasons now, watching the way the leaves changed and flowers bloomed, a private treat he knew most other merfolk no longer cared for or wanted to experience. Today the flowers were blooming, a sign of the warming weather, and Jonghyun thought they looked nice against the above-water folk’s figure. Maybe even more nice than how they looked against his glimmery pink fins when he took the fallen blossoms and weaved them into long flower chains to drape over himself. 

How interesting it was just to watch them heave sighs and breathe in air, their chest visibly moving with the action every time, so unlike the smooth and subtle movements of gills or water lungs. Jonghyun thought he could do this all day. What was most interesting and peculiar was how, beyond the obvious differences in anatomy, he had seen plenty of merfolk who looked similar in the face to this above-water folk. Were they not such different species after all? 

Jonghyun was suddenly shocked out of his reverie when the above-water folk glanced over at him, then did a double-take, eyebrows furrowing. He was much closer to them than he remembered being at the start, and his blood went cold at the realization. Cringing, Jonghyun scrambled to get below the surface again, only to see the current had brought him not only closer to the object of his observations, but out of the shadowy depths as well. It was barely deep enough for him to get out of arm’s reach of the surface, and the sun shone through to the bottom, completely revealing him to anyone close enough. 

“Ah, what do I do, what do I do,” he fretted to himself, tail swishing anxiously. He could swim away as fast as he could, but what if he led the above-water folk to somehow track him to his pod and put them all in danger? On the other hand, he was still so curious; this could be his one chance in a lifetime to see such a myth in person, and what if…

Once again, Jonghyun found himself torn out of his own thoughts by the above-water folk as they disrupted the current, sticking their strange lower arms into the water and wading their way around. Jonghyun’s mouth hung slightly open in surprise. It was so ungraceful, so awkward, the way they stomped through the muddy sand and kicked it up behind them.

Oh, shit. They weren’t just stomping around aimlessly with their unwieldly weird appendages, they were coming right for Jonghyun. He tried to swim away, but the water was just so shallow; it wasn’t all that easy to propel himself around quickly without smacking his tail into the above-water folk or ramming himself head-first into their torso. In an effort to not get caught, he was caught, the stranger’s hand grabbing his wrist and holding it firmly. 

Jonghyun yanked and tugged, but the other had a strong grip; they were saying something to him too, fairly loud. They were probably about to kill him and put his fins on display for all the other above-water folk to gawk at, just like the stories. 

Shaking his head, Jonghyun leaned forward, sinking his teeth into the creature’s wrist. The surprises didn’t end - they bled, just like merfolk, but their blood was hot in Jonghyun’s mouth. He spat it back out, ignoring the way the sensation of it in his mouth interested him. There was too much else to focus on, like the way the above-water folk didn’t even let go of him, instead using their other hand to grab the ends of his long hair and pull at it until Jonghyun’s head surfaced above water. 

He hissed and spluttered, spitting more blood back onto the above-water folk’s own face. Their beautiful face twisted up in a mix of intrigue and disgust, and upon seeing it, Jonghyun remembered how he felt originally.

They were talking to him, now, but it took Jonghyun a moment to understand it, the lack of water filtering the sound making it stab harsh into his ears.

“Who are you?” They were asking, and Jonghyun’s mind reeled at how they even spoke the same language. “How did you get here?” 

Forgetting what he was dealing with, Jonghyun shot back, “I swam here, like any sane mer! Let me go!”

“Oh,” they said, like they were shocked, eyelids fluttering. They untangled their fingers from Jonghyun’s hair, almost sheepish. “Um, so you’re not like, a mainland spy? Why did you bite me then?”

“I have no idea why I wouldn’t bite such a strange creature who suddenly attacked me!” 

The above-water folk frowned. Jonghyun realized just how close they were, then, how close he was to a creature his kind hadn’t had contact with in generations. Their eyelashes were so short and they fluttered so fast when they talked. “You’re just so pretty, I didn’t want you to leave yet…” 

  
  



	2. mermaids, ii

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> jongtae, E

“Why do you always have this stuff all over you?” Jonghyun asks, giggling, pulling at Taemin’s outfit as much as he’s pulling him into the water. 

“What stuff? Clothes? Don’t you like them?” Taemin asks, cutting off in a splutter when he allows himself to be dunked into the water all the way. Jonghyun likes his hair so much when he’s soaked - even though it’s wet, it retains some kind of springy quality that merfolk never has. 

Today Taemin’s dressed a lot more simply than he was the first time Jonghyun met him, or at least Jonghyun would assume as much, considering the lack of decoration on the plain white and maroon ‘clothes.’ Jonghyun wrinkles his nose a little. “It’s not that I don’t like them,” he says, coming at it sideways. 

“Then whaaat,” Taemin smiles at him, kicking his legs almost too hard to stay afloat next to Jonghyun. Jonghyun finds it hard to believe, still, that a man so ungraceful in the water could dance for him so well on land. “Do you want me to take them off?”

“It would help your swimming a lot if you did,” Jonghyun huffs, pulling at one of Taemin’s billowing sleeves again. “See how it causes drag? It isn’t even helpful drag, like my fins. Seriously, why do you wear this?”

“You can just tell me you want to see me naked,” Taemin laughs, turning and swimming back towards the shore. Jonghyun frowns. He and every mer he knows is naked all the time, why was Taemin even mentioning it like it was something special? 

Just as he’s about to call back out to Taemin and ask if he’s mad, if he’ll come back or if he’s leaving, Taemin shimmies out of his clothes, tossing them with a wet slap onto the stones lining the shore. Jonghyun feels his throat go dry, seeing the way Taemin’s lean muscles move to help him pull the last piece over his torso. Maybe this was why - Taemin is built so beautifully, Jonghyun wants to run his fingers along every part of him until he could reconstruct the memory in his sleep, after he swims far away, back into the depths where his pod still waited. 

Taemin leans over to drag his clothes a little out of the way of the shoreline, back to Jonghyun, perhaps knowing that Jonghyun would then see the way the knobs of his spine stick out like an instrument waiting to be played, and how the muscles of his legs stretch and curve out and up into his back. Jonghyun follows them back up Taemin’s figure as he turns around, all slim and hard-edged, but his reverie is broken when he sees what’s between Taemin’s legs. Jonghyun laughs, loud and hard, one hand flying up in front of his teeth. 

“What are you laughing at!” Taemin demands, almost offended, splashing his way back towards Jonghyun.

“It’s just -” Jonghyun cuts off into giggles again, “is  _ that  _ why you have to wear clothes all the time? Your junk is just always out? Always?!” 

Taemin flushes, making a weird aborted motion like he wants to duck his hands below the surface before remembering he has to use them to tread water. “And yours isn’t? You’re literally always naked, you can’t tell me you haven’t had your merman dick out in the water with me.”

“I - that’s not a fair comparison,” Jonghyun bluffs, because he absolutely  _ has  _ had his dick out a few times, when Taemin accidentally brushed up against him in a certain way or looked at him like he was the most amazing thing he’d ever seen and he just couldn’t help it sometimes, okay.

“So I’m right!” Taemin crows, splashing around excitedly, getting all up in Jonghyun’s personal space. “C’mon, you saw mine, let me see yours!”

“What?!” Jonghyun splutters, tailfin kicking to keep the combined weight of him and Taemin above water as the man drapes his arms around Jonghyun. He’s so close, now, body heat radiating off him and warming Jonghyun pleasantly. If things keep up like this, he won’t even have a choice in the matter, already feeling arousal squirming in his belly. 

Taemin’s hands suddenly shoot out at him, rubbing along his sides from his armpits to his hips as he laughs. Jonghyun squeaks, blood running to his face - and to other areas. 

Teasing, he cries, “Where is it, Jonghyun?!” Fingers glide and tap along the ridges of his fins and gills, and Jonghyun is caught between gasping and laughing, ticklishness warring with sudden flutters of heat. 

He feels it in his gut, the rush that always accompanies the unsheathing. Face heating, Jonghyun wiggles his way out of Taemin’s grip, angling his fins to help him swim backwards a little, until he’s entirely too far past where Taemin might be able to swim safely. 

Of course, he loves Taemin. It’s not shame or hesitance that drives him back, because he knows Taemin also loves him, and yet. Taemin probably doesn’t know what he’s getting into.

Taemin coos, a knowing glint to his eyes, and tries to follow him. Jonghyun gapes, tail thrusting slow and heavy and sure through the water to keep himself afloat, opposite of his heartbeat, quick and light and nervous.

“Taemin, no, you’ll go under over here, go back,” he stutters his way through the sentence, in his arousal and panic not realizing that he could just swim forwards and save them both the stress. 

Uncaring, easy, Taemin smiles at him, and says as sure as he’d mention the sun rising, “you can just hold me up if it’s too deep.”

Jonghyun feels like he has a sunburn, his face is so hot, and it must be as vivid on his face as a sunburn, too. Bright and pink like his hair, trailing around him and fanning out in clouds around the surface of the water. Bright and pink like his--

Taemin slips a little in his uneasy strokes through the water, head dipping under for a moment. His small hands flail around in the water, and Jonghyun feels the disturbance of his legs kicking as fast as they can. Reaching out before he can even think, Jonghyun laces his fingers between Taemin’s, using the grip to pull the other flush against his body. 

As soon as Taemin gets his breath back, a tense instant where his head is bowing onto Jonghyun’s shoulder, he’s back up and laughing in Jonghyun’s face. Drops of ocean water fall from his hair, dotting his face and making him look fresh and so clean. 

Distracted as he is by Taemin’s gorgeous half moon smile, the one that scrunches up his eyes and plumps his cheeks, Jonghyun almost doesn’t have enough free energy to be confused. He is, though, somewhere inside himself, because Taemin almost just drowned, why in the world’s oceans would he be laughing like he just won the lottery?

A hard, firm length of  _ something  _ suddenly presses up against his side, right where his soft belly transitions into silky, protective scales, and Jonghyun startles. 

“See?” Taemin whispers into Jonghyun’s ear, tucking his head back into Jonghyun’s neck. “I knew you’d hold onto me, hyung.” 

One of his hands makes its way from being hooked onto his shoulder, trailing its way down his torso. Jonghyun tries not to flinch as the weight against him shifts, causing the insistently pressing  _ something  _ to move too, rubbing against the grain of his scales. 

“But I was just playing around with you,” Taemin continues, rubbing his palm against Jonghyun’s pec, pressing it just enough. Jonghyun hisses, hedging towards mad at him, underneath the thrum of heat. “I wasn’t actually in any danger of drowning.” 

Taemin’s hand slides down again, and Jonghyun sighs in relief, which Taemin no doubt mistakes for being because of his continued safety. Really, he doesn’t know how much longer he can take this, before his body starts to act without his influence. It’s already gone beyond his influence, actually, his dick thrashing around in the water as it searches for the nearest heat source.

His legs have stopped kicking entirely now, simply floating alongside the length of Jonghyun’s tail as it strokes. It’s hard not to bang his tail into them while just treading water, so Jonghyun tilts out of the way, which changes the trajectory. They lazily swim in circles, like the paths Jonghyun’s thoughts travel along, arguing for or against letting Taemin take what he wants. 

The strange, sharp heat of the small  _ something  _ pressing into his hip and occasionally twitching is distracting, to say the least. To say more than the least, it interests his own dick, which strains in its direction.

“What is that,” he blurts out, when Taemin just lets it rub against him for far too long. 

“What is what?” Taemin laughs back at him, and he wiggles his hips so that he’s arching it further into Jonghyun, definitely on purpose. 

Jonghyun knows what that something is, so he’s not even sure why he asked, why he’s being vague about it. It feels different from his own or from Minho’s, not wet or wriggling, just sitting there, insistent in its position against him. 

As if summoned by his thoughts, fingers suddenly wrap around the base of his cock, and it squirms, wrapping itself around Taemin’s wrist, the tip twisting and working its way between the slits separating each finger. 

He gasps, stomach spasming as he tries not to double over and dunk them both, and Taemin echoes the sound. Jonghyun’s hips arch into the touch, and he’s swimming a little bit different then, thrusting into Taemin’s grip slightly every time he moves. 

“You should know what it is, Jonghyun, you have one too,” Taemin then says, though Jonghyun’s mind has forgotten the question, lost in the feeling of his rough, calloused palm wrapped around him. It’s beginning to stroke him in time with the movements he’s making, friction so delicious against the smooth glide of the water that Jonghyun almost can’t breathe. 

Taemin’s voice lowers, and he leans in, grazing his teeth along Jonghyun’s neck, “I like the feeling of yours in my hand better than mine, though. You make it almost better to hold it than see it.”

“Shore,” Jonghyun gasps out. “Now.” 

Taemin’s grip lets up then, and though his dick is reluctant to give that up, Jonghyun’s brain is more than relieved. One of his fingers drags in lazy circles around the base instead, causing sparks to shoot up Jonghyun’s spine. It’s not much easier to swim with; it’s almost too arousing in a different kind of way. Jonghyun finds himself loving the tease of it, biting his own lips to keep moans from bubbling out of his throat.

It’s an unsteady but overall quick trip, and Jonghyun all but pushes Taemin out of his arms when they get to the stony shore so he can fling himself up onto one of the smooth slabs jutting from it. The stone is warm under his skin, quick to soak up the water he brings with him. He moans at the contact, unable to hold the noises back anymore. 

He doesn’t come up fully from the water often, for the sole reason that air lungs are much harder to breathe through than water lungs, despite their bigger capacity. Jonghyun focuses consciously on the act for a minute, ignoring his dick trapped between his own body and the heat of the rock, simply feeling the way his chest contracts and expands irregularly. 

“Jesus, Jonghyun, are you alright?” Taemin calls, his feet slapping against the rocks as he runs towards him. A hand lands on Jonghyun’s shoulder, rubs soothingly. Jonghyun nods, still catching his breath, and props himself up on his elbows before turning his head slightly to look up at Taemin. 

“I’ve never seen you on land like this before,” Taemin continues when Jonghyun makes eye contact, a question in his voice. He looks worried, eyes wide and blinking water out of his face fast, but there’s a high flush on his cheeks. He keeps glancing away, distracted by Jonghyun’s tail and his lips.

Jonghyun breathes a couple more times, swallows, and then resettles his weight onto only one arm so he can reach up and cup Taemin’s face with one hand. It’s gentle and familiar, and Taemin leans into the touch, concerned expression softening into a small smile. “I wanted to touch you.”

Taemin’s smile turns a little silly, and he sits down on the rock next to Jonghyun, legs spread wide and with one foot rubbing against Jonghyun’s tail where the scales give way to a small, magenta fin. “You were already touching me, though.” 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for those interested, the prompting period of the winter of shinee fest has opened today, and that fest has officially kicked off. if you have any ideas for shinee fic, please suggest them by following the links on [our twitter page](https://twitter.com/summerof5hinee). you don't have to be a writer, just someone with ideas! thanks for reading as usual. :3


	3. law

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> jongyu, T

Jinki toes off his shoes, leaving them at the front door in a heap beside the neater rows of slightly larger shoes that have begun to occupy his foyer at all times. He smiles at it, the disorganization juxtaposed against orderliness in a way that feels like home, and stashes his long overcoat in the closet for the next time he goes out. 

It’s been a cold day, a colder evening, and the threat of a heavier snowfall throughout the evening had been thick in the air on Jinki’s walk home. The chill still nips at his nose as he makes his way down the main hallway of his home, socked feet padding against the hardwood planks of the floor. It’s nicely decorated, for once, garlands hung along the rafters and candles lit on every surface. The cheer of Christmas had seemingly gotten to him for the first time in his life, and Jinki doesn’t mind the reminder of the impending holiday as much as he had in years prior. 

There’s a small clatter from the direction of the kitchen, and as much as Jinki would like to go undress from his stuffy suit and change into something more loose-fitting, he’s curious. Untying his tie and unbuttoning the top couple of buttons as he goes along, to alleviate some of the feeling of suffocating in his own clothing, Jinki heads towards the kitchen. 

His kitchen has large, picture windows that open out to face the valley that his property backs up against, and Jinki notices almost distractedly that big blobs of snow have begun to fall fast and stick against them, the fields beyond his own home dusted with the slightest bits of white. It seems cold, and that places it in opposition to the warm scene happening inside. 

He would recognize the wide set of the shoulders and the narrow lean waist before him anywhere, even from behind. Jonghyun, the one person who seems only to frown upon him, the public defender with a heart of gold who refuses to see eye-to-eye with Jinki, stands there, sweeping pieces of vegetables that are scattered across the counter into one pile with his palms. He’s wearing a comfortable-looking black shirt with a collar stretched by use and time, and his legs drown in the baggy pink sweats he’s got on. Jinki feels frozen to his spot, stuck just watching as Jonghyun picks up the vegetables and dumps them all into a pot he’s got on the stove. He walks around in Jinki’s kitchen like it’s his own, humming as he methodically works through a recipe he seems to have memorized. 

Jinki’s struck silent, and he realizes he’s been watching for a long time when Jonghyun finally smirks and looks up at him through his eyelashes, greeting him with a teasing, “Enjoying the show?” 

Jonghyun would never look at Jinki like that; or, that was what Jinki had always thought. His face feels hot with the embarrassment of being caught as well as with something else, a flighty feeling that curls in his joints and sends his heart twirling. “What show?” He bluffs, and it’s as if Jonghyun’s acknowledgement was what he needed to start himself back into action, because he doesn’t hesitate at all to step closer this time. Jonghyun turns away then, though, showing Jinki the back of his head as he goes back to work slicing up a block of tofu. Jinki never noticed it, but Jonghyun’s hair is really bouncy. It looks soft. 

In this moment, this situation he knows in his gut is unusual as much as his mind leans into it with pleasure and familiarity, Jinki feels like there are no rules. And yet he’s not sure how to proceed, left adrift without a compass to guide him through this interaction. Jinki almost leans up and cards his fingers through the back of Jonghyun’s hair, just to see what happens, but as he lifts a hand, Jonghyun speaks up. 

“You’re not going to come over here?”

Jinki supposes he should, supposes that he should listen to his heart in this situation and let it tell him that he would do anything Jonghyun asked him right now. He steps forward enough to peek over Jonghyun’s shoulder at the pot of stew he’s making, breathes in its hearty aroma and tries not to revel in the slight whiff of Jonghyun’s cologne he catches with it. 

Jonghyun’s arm reaches back until he’s grabbing one of Jinki’s own, pulling it forwards until Jinki’s hand is wrapped around Jonghyun’s waist. Jonghyun is warm and solid underneath his hand, and Jinki splays it out just to feel more of the defined ridges of Jonghyun’s abs beneath the soft fabric of his shirt. Before he knows what he’s doing, before he’s caught up with himself, Jinki has his head leaning against Jonghyun’s shoulder and his other arm looped to press against Jonghyun’s chest. Like this, he can feel all of Jonghyun’s back pressed up against his front, and Jonghyun’s breath leaves him in a sigh that has his chest shifting against Jinki’s open palm. The noise sounds contented, and Jinki feels that way too; as if nothing could get him to move away from the embrace right now. 

“That’s better,” Jonghyun finally says, swaying them from side to side as his hands find Jinki’s own and press against them, putting them more firmly against Jonghyun’s skin. “I missed you tonight.” 

“You did?” Jinki asks, almost surprised. Something about the idea of Jonghyun missing him strikes him off-guard, catching him in a sensitive gap in the armor that, usually, would protect him from caring too much about Jonghyun. Caring too much about Jonghyun leads to being hurt by Jonghyun, when Jonghyun finds a reason to declare his contempt for the moral bankruptcy he always claims Jinki has. But, given the chance…

He finds he likes caring a lot more than he should. 

“I always do,” Jonghyun murmurs, leaning back until his head is resting against Jinki’s own shoulder, turning towards him with a smile on his face and love in his eyes. Jinki feels himself fall a little further, and Jonghyun brushes his lips against Jinki’s neck with a familiar intimacy that Jinki’s never known. They’re soft, warm, and Jinki feels the ghost of the sensation remain after Jonghyun pulls back a little to ask, “How was work today?” 

The tone he asks in reminds Jinki of an inside joke, but it’s one he doesn’t remember. Work… He frowns a little, looking away from Jonghyun enough to stare out the window again. It’s fully dark outside, now, and he can’t see what lays beyond the frame. What goes on inside his mind feels much the same way, like he can’t think for long before running into a wall that obscures anything he might want to know. “I’m not sure,” he muses. “I can’t seem to remember it now.” 

“That boring, huh?” Jonghyun laughs, pulling away a little as the pot before him begins to bubble over. Jinki misses the way his hands had fit perfectly over his own immediately, and leans forwards, dragging his palms down Jonghyun’s arms until they’re holding hands. “Jinki, I don’t want this to burn,” he giggles, but doesn’t shake Jinki off.

“Just turn it off, then,” Jinki murmurs into Jonghyun’s hair, not holding back anymore as he presses his lips into the soft silkiness of it. Jonghyun’s hair smells like lemongrass and amber, Jinki notices. “More important things to do.” 

Jonghyun does as much, and he’s immediately turning around in Jinki’s arms and slotting his hands along Jinki’s waist, leaning in. Jinki wants to take a photo so he never forgets how Jonghyun’s face looks with his eyes slipped shut, only millimeters away from Jinki with his lips parted slightly. The light makes them glisten, inviting Jinki to tip forward the last bit and finally kiss him. 

It’s wonderful, kissing Jonghyun, Jinki realizes as soon as their lips are connected. Jonghyun presses into him with an insistence that makes Jinki only want him more, humming and teasing Jinki by moving away every so often, as if he wants to watch Jinki chase after him. Jinki never wants to stop, and he grips Jonghyun’s arms, sliding his arms up around his neck to tangle his fingers in Jonghyun’s hair and pull him towards a better angle.

Jonghyun obviously likes his hair pulled, gasping and leaning too far into it for Jinki to read it as anything else. So Jinki tugs it again, and again, until Jonghyun’s panting into Jinki’s mouth, grasping blindly at his waist with those big hands of his and tugging Jinki’s waist into Jonghyun’s, bucking up against him. He’s already half-hard, pressing his erection into Jinki’s groin with a heavy heat that just makes Jinki want  _ more.  _

“Not in the--” Jonghyun breathes against Jinki’s lips when Jinki cants his hips to meet Jonghyun’s, before he’s interrupted by a sudden noise, eyes going wide and darting around to find the source. It’s a repetitive, annoying beeping, and Jinki frowns. It seems familiar, more so than anything he’s experienced since he got home. 

“What  _ is  _ that noise?” He asks, joining Jonghyun in looking for it, as much as he never wants to look away from the man in his arms. 

“It sounds like my kitchen timer, hold on,” Jonghyun mutters, detaching himself from Jinki and turning to rifle through a few of Jinki’s kitchen drawers, ones that typically go unused but that seem to be full of anything from knickknacks to cooking supplies all of a sudden. Jinki notices with a zing of delight the way that Jonghyun angles his hips away from the drawers, the way that he seems to be adamantly hiding the front of his sweats from Jinki. 

The beeping keeps getting louder, stabbing into his eardrums, and Jinki cringes. Even covering his ears doesn’t make it stop, and he desperately wants it to for a reason he doesn’t remember, either. Jonghyun keeps searching through the drawers, now taking entire collections of silverware and other utensils out and setting them at random across the counters. Jinki has never seen any of it before, and it suddenly looks too wrong, like it doesn’t belong. He screws his eyes shut for only a moment, and the noise becomes overwhelming, drowning out all of his thoughts in its harsh sounds. 

Jinki’s eyes snap open to near-darkness, only broken by the dim light of a far away lamppost shining through the cracks in his blinds and onto his ceiling. He’s alone, and in his own bedroom. 

Gasping, he shoots up, head twisting to find the real source of the sound. His phone lays on his nightstand, same as it is every morning, and his backup alarm for work is going off. He grabs the phone and swipes to dismiss the alarm, heart in his throat. He’s late, obviously, otherwise he would’ve turned off the backup when he got up, but all Jinki can do is fling the phone aside onto his bed and sit there. Alone. 

Jinki has never felt so clearly the sense that he lives alone before. No heat radiates from someone ( _ Jonghyun _ ) sleeping nearby, no breath besides his own jagged exhales breaks the silence. He stares down at his own hands and remembers the firm weight of Jonghyun’s own larger and more veiny ones pressing into them, the way their fingers laced over each other perfectly. He thinks about everything else, and knows by the rush of feeling that Jonghyun’s crotch pressing against his own gives him that he’s woken up hard. 

Ignoring his erection, no matter how much he wants to take it in his hand and wrap his whole mind up in his dream again, Jinki leans over and scrambles for his phone. He can’t do this. It’s only six thirty, but maybe Kibum will be awake. Fingers shaking, he hits the call button. 

“What’s so important you can’t wait til you’re at the office to tell me,” Kibum snaps instead of saying hello, voice gravelly with sleep. 

“I’m calling in. See you tomorrow.” Jinki hangs up and curses the way his voice was wobbling the whole call. Kibum immediately starts texting him, and Jinki tosses the phone away again, letting the repetitive dings of the message notifications fill the room. 

He has too much to think about, all of a sudden. 

* * *

It’s after hours, the heavy wooden blinds drawn long since closed for the night. The only lighting comes from the lamps mounted to the paneled walls, and from the green glass light on Jinki’s desk. It’s not bright enough to read the sheafs of evidence he flips through, and he curses the idea that his eyes could be getting worse with old age. It could be worse, though, he thinks, pushing his round glasses up a notch on his nose; he could be anyone except the founder and chairman of a successful tax law firm. 

He sits back after a few more minutes attempting to parse through the taxpayer’s records, a collection of half-finished forms and obvious lies that will be hard for him to defend in court. Jinki leans back into his leather chair with a heavy sigh. The paycheck and clout he has in the local community is not worth the stress or the toll it does on his back sometimes, that’s for sure. He picks up his desk phone, dials the extension he’s had memorized for years, and says as soon as the other end picks up, “Come here.” 

“Why would I do that?” 

“I need a break, of course.” 

He’s greeted with a smooth and breathy laugh that crackles over their cheap phone system. Jinki makes a mental note to have it replaced, so he can hear better. “I’ll be there in five, but I hope you know I’m not going off the clock. This still counts as overtime and I expect compensation.” 

“Oh, you’ll be compensated, alright,” Jinki chuckles with a smile growing on his face before hanging up. It’s quick work to clear his desk, shoving the files into one drawer and the outdated law book he’s been referencing into another to look at again later. The dregs of his jasmine tea is finished off in a couple sips and the cup placed in his private cabinet with the rest of his tea-making set. In his experience, it’s been better for the desk to be clean; then he doesn’t have to explain the way the pages are out of order and half of them are stained or creased in strange places to his paralegal later on. 

The wait is as long as it is short, an eternity and a second passing by before there’s a series of knocks against his door. Jinki doesn’t call out a “Come in!” like he would for any other visitor; instead, he stands, dusts off his pants, and walks to open the door himself, shoes clicking against the hardwood flooring. 

Jonghyun stands there, soft smile quirking his lips as he stares up at Jinki, jacket slung over one shoulder and white dress-shirt rumpled with the action of his day. His eyebags are back, Jinki notices immediately, but the happiness in his eyes is genuine enough to let it slip by without comment. He simply steps back from the door, letting Jonghyun step in before he shuts it and locks it with a sharp click. 

“So, good evening,” Jonghyun finally greets, settling into one of the low chairs facing Jinki’s desk and draping his suit jacket over the arm. He crosses his legs and tilts his head back to look at Jinki with a blinding wide smile, the kind that still makes Jinki’s heart flip, “to what do I owe this pleasure?” 

“I was just missing you,” Jinki says, stopping next to Jonghyun’s chair and settling a hand on his shoulder. Jonghyun’s muscles are firm beneath the shirt, its loose nature hiding almost everything Jinki feels beneath. “But this isn’t your seat, Jonghyun.” 

Jonghyun makes a little noise, realizing what kind of break this is, and quickly stands. He’s too close to Jinki to be read as anything except for eager, close enough that Jinki can feel the heat of his chest ghosting against Jinki’s own as he skirts past him, and Jinki swallows. Jonghyun smooths his big hands along the arms of Jinki’s own chair as he sits down in it in a way that’s impossible for Jinki to ignore. When he sits, he spreads his legs and slouches as far down as he can without his ass slipping out of the chair and onto the floor, still smiling up at Jinki. “Better?”

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for not uploading to this for a while. i'm here now, i want to finish uploading things here. anyways, as a treat, this one has the contents of two documents; it's also one that i uploaded partially on tumblr, so i hope you enjoy it if you haven't seen it there already. i'll probably upload another one today too, to make up for both of lateness and reposting.
> 
> i do want to finish this au, but with my new major being legal studies, i would like to get through my degree & into the field so i can give it proper treatment. :3 
> 
> claiming prompts for the winter fest at [summer of shinee](https://twitter.com/summerof5hinee) is almost over. if you'd like to spend your winter sharing your creativity warmly with us and the rest of the shinee fic community, i hope you'll consider joining! and thank you to those that have already.


	4. warmth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> jongyu, very E

“oh god,” jonghyun groans, deep in his chest, as jinki shifts. he’s strung out, oversensitive, and yet it isn’t enough. he whines and grinds down a little, feeling jinki’s cock nudge just the slightest bit further inside him. 

it’s been soft for a while, as jinki forgot what they were doing in favor of wrapping himself up in his architectural work. the scratch of pencils and markers against the heavy paper jinki preferred using was the only sound in the room for a long while, both content to be joined without motion. the weight and feeling of connection is enough for jonghyun, and his mind slips almost hazily between sensations and emotions. his writing took on an ethereal tone, disjointed and nonsensical, and though he knows he will have to edit it to hell and back, there’s no part of him that minds. the shape of jinki’s warmth imprints itself onto him. 

their days are nearly up, and jonghyun feels the pleasant burn of being stretched for so long down to his toes. jinki’s dick grows when it gets hard, and jonghyun  _ wants.  _ he wants to feel it swell inside him, wants it to stretch him even further past what his body has grown to accept over the last few hours. 

“do you need more?” jinki murmurs, right hand stilling on the page as his left slips down jonghyun’s waist and teases at where his rim is meeting the base of jinki’s dick. jonghyun sighs out sharply at the feeling, the slight pressure against him. 

“i w-” jonghyun stops, feeling the clumsy way his lips refuse to work with him, and tries again. “i  _ want  _ more.”

* * *

jonghyun moans and hisses, writhing between the bed and jinki, unsure whether he wants to arc away or towards the sensations this is sending thrumming through him. he’s always been sensitive, by nature, but this is a whole new level - every tease of jinki’s fingers against his thighs spark fires in him, and every stroke of jinki’s cock hits hard and deep and drags so well against him that he doesn’t know how life could be anything except this all-consuming feeling. 

“fuck, fuck, right  _ there _ ,” he moans, when jinki’s knee slips against the sheets, tilting his angle and making him press jonghyun’s knees more heavily towards his own shoulders. jonghyun can already feel the pull in his muscles, knows he’s going to be sore tomorrow, but it fades away under the electrifying feeling of jinki hammering into his prostate over and over again. 

the sounds rip out of him, louder, voice breaking and breathless with lust, perfectly timed against the thrusts.

jinki’s quiet, by comparison, panting and making bitten-off noises into jonghyun’s chest. sometimes he takes one of jonghyun’s pecs into his mouth and sucks until jonghyun screams and cums, painting them both in it. 

he’s climaxed three times already, from foreplay until this moment, oversensitive and triggered by any feather-light touch. he gasps, body pulled taut, as jinki nearly tips him over the edge once more, one hand drifting from where it was clenched over the back of his supple thigh to his cock. 

jinki’s hand is rough and calloused, so warm against jonghyun, and he squeezes hard, preventing jonghyun from cumming. the pressure is mindblowing, and he moans with abandon, twisting his hips into the circle of jinki’s palm and onto the thrust of his heavy cock.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> no specific au for this, and i didn't finish it! i'm not good at writing smut! hope you enjoy it anyways.


	5. fame

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> jongtae, jongyu, T

Electricity thrums through veins of wrapped bronze, heating a body he knows well by now. Programs and machinery hum together as one, wrapping around each other, a close facsimile of a flesh-and-blood form. It’s his, and yet not. In the way that any container could equally hold him, it can never hold all of who he is. The awareness of other partitions of his consciousness, housed in phones and computers and other android bodies, and the messages they send back to him keep that idea from holding true. The world feels at once too large and too small for him; and how could it not? He can see all. He can feel none, not in the way anyone else seems able to. 

Where  _ is  _ this container? He allows the eyesight program, a niggling little thing that will keep notifying him until it gets his attention, to switch on. The form’s vision flicks on in due time, slowed by the whir of the attached mechanics. Eyelids of aluminum, camera hidden in a false ivory shell… he knows what it looks like, has seen it many times, from mirrors but more often from the viewpoint of other cameras he has access to.

The signs lining the wall of the holding are in Japanese - which tells him nothing about his current location. They blare warnings and notices in blocky fonts, reds and blues and smaller penciled blacks. It’s nothing Taemin feels a conscious need to read, but his programs are leaps and bounds ahead of his own thoughts, and the meaning is parsed within milliseconds. He sends a command for the eyes to slip shut again. 

There is not much to do, here and now, except for wait. Taemin has found over the last few years that he hates the idea. It’s too stifling, not being able to act and improve, practice and refine. He considers turning on the most recent footage of his latest concert again, considers allowing his consciousness to take the back seat as his complex learning processes comb through the video and pick out every mistake he can improve upon. And how many times has he done that? There’s only so close he can get to perfect, and Taemin sometimes feels like a modern-day imitation of Icarus; soar too high with his robotic body, and it will fall down around him, and his mind will drown in the ocean of darkness that always comes the moment before he fully shuts down. 

It’s a metaphor that’s eerily apt, one he’s been stuck on since his background programming picked it up and fed it into his information banks. He can never be perfect, not in the imperfect way the humans around him seem to surpass every day. Taemin knows how they feel, has read the forum posts about him millions of times. As much as he’s their talented star, the pride of the postmodern idol industry, he’s also a fake.  _ Uncanny _ , they call him, or  _ creepy,  _ with his artificial face and limbs of brushed chrome. An expensive doll programmed to cut long-term costs, to replace the talent of real people. They loop moments his machinery lags behind his mind in gifs, laugh at clips showing the stutter of his voicebank when it can’t move fast enough to follow him in interviews. He wonders if they would do the same to any mistake Jonghyun or Kibum could make, and instantly knows the answer. 

Jealousy is a feeling that will get him nowhere, especially when it’s so uncalled-for. He deletes the previous thought from his log, and banishes it similarly from his program. It will only be so long before it returns. 

Back to the matter at hand: where on Earth is he? He wracks his conversation logs, skimming through days of discussions with various people at the company, and finds himself oddly unsure of the answer. Minho, himself, Jinki, Kibum… nowhere does he find any mention of a reason that his main consciousness has been redirected from Jonghyun’s personal computer and to this body. 

Maybe he did it himself. Taemin can’t be sure of anything, these days; his memories are too easy to self-manipulate, his logs deleted at random when he finds them not of use at the moment of saving. 

He needs to be more careful. More impartial. Taemin opens his eyes again, head craning back on its interlaced silver spine. There’s a hatch at the top of the round holding container, rather than at the front, as it usually would be. He lifts the limbs of this body, long and unclothed, and pushes against the handle. It opens with a hiss. Unfortunately, he’s not tall enough to do anything more than this. 

Taemin stands there, the fluorescent lights above him raining down on him in a halo. They glance and gleam off his fingertips, and he opens his mouth to call out for someone, when the front of the container suddenly pushes itself outwards and slides away. Surprise runs a dull, minor path along his processors, twisting the expression of his current face without his permission. 

“You’re doing calibration tests today for your concert tomorrow, did you forget?” Jinki says as a greeting, standing before him. From Taemin’s elevated standing inside the holding, Jinki is shorter than him, and Taemin thrills in being able to see where his hair parts at the top of his head. It puts him at a higher position than Jinki, his own programmer, if only for a moment. “Or maybe Jonghyun forgot to pass along the message… I thought you’d listen to him more than me.”

Jinki outstretches hands to help him down, all stubby fingers and warm palms, earthy tones and flushes of blood. Taemin’s mechanical hand, tendons visible as black cord and joints made of cold wrought iron, stand out too much in comparison when he places it in Jinki’s own. 

The image distracts him momentarily, but when the mention of Jonghyun in Jinki’s voice finally processes, Taemin feels it again. Jealousy. 

==

On the stage, Taemin  _ is.  _

He is bright, shining. 

He is practiced, perfected, poised.

He is human beyond human definitions. 

He is a well-oiled machine in every sense of the word, genuine as much as he is not, the product of lifetimes worth of hard work and study. 

The lights bear down on him, and Taemin can tell they are hot, but not as hot as the gaze he sends the nearest camera, lens staring into lens. He can’t feel their temperature, of course; but he can feel the heat of passion that the fans send back at him when the feed connects to the LED screen hoisted above the stage. 

His limbs run through the programming of the next few steps, almost disconnected from his consciousness in the way that they have to be when he’s involved in a performance. It feels good, feels right. 

He is a million different ideas in one, a supernova about to reach its highest point. Everything else is forgotten in the face of burn of his processing units, the creak of his joints, the vibration of his voicebank in his throat, the starry lights waved by the audience. The rush is one that he can’t get enough of. 

He is Taemin. And the appeal of the unnatural yet heartfelt smile his android face poses with draws them in just as much as his talents. 

==

Taemin had once read that as rose petals begin to wither, red velvet fading into purple and then black, they become fleshier and thicker to the touch. He looks at Jonghyun sometimes, with his lips parted in thought or before he takes a sip from whatever bottle he has with him that day. The same color as a rose, in the right lighting, after the right comment from Taemin makes him flush and bite his lips. Is it possible to wonder what that mouth would feel like, when he’s never held or felt anything to begin with, when he has no frame of reference? 

Jonghyun tells him all the time how things feel, attempting to bridge the gap between man and machine. Jonghyun tells him about how romantic certain feelings are, like laying in bed with another warm body pressed against him or having his hair brushed from his forehead when he falls sick with exhaustion. To take care of another person, and be taken care of in ways that extend beyond nonphysical. 

These sentiments are filed away in their own special folders, voice clips and message logs saved for Taemin to pour over for the nth time whenever he feels the need to want. Whenever he wants to shut off all his excess programming and lose himself in a fantasy separate from his reality--whenever he wants to feel less-and-more than he is. Whenever he wants and needs to feel human. 

Jonghyun’s voice curls wistfully over the ideas, whenever he shares them, in quiet and dark nights with Taemin sitting before him. Glass and pixels always separate them, but whenever Jonghyun presses his hands against them, whenever his knees rest insistently against where Taemin’s do, Taemin makes a show of leaning into it and mirroring his actions. Reciprocity is all he can give to show how much he  _ wants.  _

But he can’t keep his processing from reminding him of a fact that’s more than obvious, no matter how much he wants to forget it. The only one Jonghyun has experienced those moments of true physical intimacy and closeness with, despite the number of one-night flings he’s admitted to having, has been Jinki. Jinki, with the gentle slopes of every part of his form, the ones that would give under a firm touch. With pink undertones to his skin and a face with a handsome nose and wrinkles under eyes that are as innocent as they are sharp and wise. 

Sometimes Taemin can’t help himself, and he calls up pictures of them together, sharp burns in the shape of his binary as he examines the way they look together. They look right, always comfortable and cheerful around each other, and they send each other glances that are full of familiar warmth. He stares, memorizing each covert snapshot against his will. And he wants, fiercely, futilely. Jealously. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> an aborted sequel to what's this feeling where i tried to retain some of the feeling i had originally gone into that work with - as in, it was going to be darker, more serious, and more existential, as i like my android fic to be. there are still hints of plotlines that i was weaving into the opening sequences here if you read attentively, but there is simply too much to the universe for me to reasonably explore rn. *shrugs*
> 
> anyways, merry christmas to those around the world who celebrate.


End file.
